LIBRARY OF CONGREM 

IIIIIHII 



ODDOSDTTEEb 



\ 



An oration, delivered by Richard Rush, 
on the 4th of July, 1812, in the Hall of the 
House of Representatives, at the Capitol, 
Washington. Delivered at the request of 
the committee of arrangement for the cele- 
bration of that day, and, at their request 
published. 



V 



ORx\TION. 



SENSIBLY as I feel, fellow citizens, the 
honor of having been selected to address you 
on such an occasion as this, I am not less sensi- 
ble of the difficulties of the task. Not that 
there is any thing intrinsically arduous in a cele- 
bration, in this form, of the most brilliant politi- 
cal anniversary of the world ; but as the subject 
has been repeatedly exhibited, under so many 
points of view, I am apprehensive of tiring, 
without being able to requite, the attention with 
which you may be good enough to honor my 
endeavors. The fruitful subject must still sustain 
me, and I proceed, with unfeigned diffidence, and 
the most profound respect for this distinguished 
and enlightened assembly, to perform the office 
assigned me.* 

Diwing each return of this day for nearly 
thirty successive years, our country rested in all 
the security and all the blessings of peace. But 
the scene and the aspect are changed. The 
menacing front of War is before us, to awaken 
©ur solicitudes, to demand at the hands of each 

* The President of the United States, Heads of Department, 
members of Congress, &c. as well as citizens and strangers, were 
present at the delivery of this discourse. 



• • • 



* 

♦ 



4 

citizen of the republic tlie most active energies 
of duty; to ask, if need be, the largest sacrifices 
of advantage and of ease. The tranquillity, the 
repose, the enjoyments, the schemes, the hopes of 
peace, are, for a while, no more. These, with 
their endearing concomitants, are to give place to 
thd stronger and more agitating passions, to the 
busy engagements, to the solemn and anxious 
thoughts, to the trials, to the sufferings, that fol- 
low in the train of war. 

Man, in his individual nature, becomes vir- 
tuous by constant struggles against his own im- 
perfections. His intellectual eminence, which 
puts him at the head of created beings, is attain- 
ed also by long toil, and painful self denials, 
bringing with them, but too often, despondence 
to his mind, and hazards to his frame. It would 
seem to be a law of his existence, that great 
enjoyment is only to be obtained as the reward 
of great exertion. " She shall go to a wealthy 
place," but her way shall be " through fire and 
through water." It seems the irreversible lot of 
nations, that their permanent well being is to be 
achieved also through severe probations. Their 
origin is often in agony and blood, and their 
safety to be maintained only by constant vigi- 
lance, by arduous eff )rts, by a willingness to 
encounter danger and by actually and frequently 
braving it. Their prospt rity, their rights, their 
liberties, are, alas, scarcely otherwise to be 






• ' * 



5 



placed upon a secure and durable basis ! It is in 
vain that the precepts of the moralist, or the 
maxims of a sublimated reason, are levelled at 
the inutility, if not the criminality of wars; in 
vain that eloquence pourtrays, that humanity 
di^plores the misery they inflict If the wishrs 
of the philanthropist could be realised, then, in- 
deed, happily for us, happily for the whole hu- 
man race, they would be banished forever from 
the world But while selfishness, ambition, and 
the lust of plunder, continue to infest the bosoms 
of the rulers of nations, wars will take place : 
they always have taken place, and the nation 
that shall, at this day, hope to shelter itself by 
standing, in practice,, on their abstract impro- 
priety, must expect to see its very foundations 
assailed — assailed by cunning and artifice, or by 
the burst and fury of those fierce, ungoverned, 
passions, which its utmost forbearance would 
not be able to deprecate or appease. It would 
assuredly fall, and with fatal speed, the victim 
of its own impracticable virtue. 

Thirty years, fellow citizens, is a long time to 
have been exempt from the calamities of war. 
Few nations of the world, in any age, have en- 
joyed so long an exemption. It is a fact that 
affords, in itself, the most honorable and incon- 
testible proof, that those who have guided the 
destinies of this have ardently cherished peace; 
for, it is impossible, but thaj^ during the lapse of 



6 

such a period abundant provocation most have 
presented, had nut our government and people 
been slo^v to wrath, and almost predetermined 
against wars. It is a lamentable truth, that 
during the whole of this period we have been 
the subjects of unjust treatment at the hands of 
other nations, and that the constancv of our 
own forbearance has been followed up by the 
constant infliction of w^rongs upon ourselves. 
When, let us ask with exultation, when have 
ambassadors from other countries been sent to 
our shores to complain of injuries done by the 
American states? what nation have the Ame- 
rican states plundered? what nation have the 
American states outraged? upon what rights 
have the American states trampled? In the 
piide of justice and of true honor, we answer 
none; but we have sent forth from oui'selves the 
messengers of peace and conciliation, again and 
ajrain, across seas and to distant countries — to 
ask, earnestly to sue, for a cessation of the inju- 
ries done to us They have gone chaigcd with 
our well founded complaints, to deprecate the 
longer practice of unfriendly tiealment; to pro- 
test, under the sensibility of real suflVring, against 
that course which made the persons and the pro- 
perty of our countrymen the subjects of rude 
seizure and rapacious spoliation These have 
been the ends they were sent to obtain — ends 
too fair for protracted refusals, too intelligible to 



have been entangled in evasive subtiUies, too le- 
gitimate to have been neglected in hostile silence. 
When their ministers have been sent to us, what 
has been the aim of their missions? to urge 
redress for wrongs done to them, shall we again 
ask? No, the melancholy reverse! for in too 
many instances they have come to excuse, to 
palliate, or even to endeavor, in some shape, to 
rivet those inflicted by their own sovereigns 
upon us. 

Perhaps the annals of no nation, of the un- 
doubted resources of this, afford a similar in- 
stance of encroachments upon its essential rights, 
for so long a time, without some exertion of the 
public force to check or to prevent them. The 
entire amount of property of which, during a 
space of about twenty years, our citizens have 
been plundered, alternately by one or the other, or 
by both, of the two great belligerent powers of 
Europe, would form, could it be ascertained, a 
curious and perhaps novel record of persevering 
injustice on the part of nations professing to be at 
peace. Unless recollection be awakened intp ef- 
fort, we are not ourselves sensible, and it requires 
at this day some effort to make us so, of the num- 
ber and magnitude of the injuries that have been 
heaped upon us. They teach in pathology, that 
the most violent impressions lose the power of 
exciting sensation, when applied gradually and 
continued for a long time. I'his has been 



8 

strikingly tme in its application to ourselves as a 
ration. The aggressions we have received have 
made a regular, and the most copious part of our 
national occurrences, and stand incorporated, un- 
der an aspect more prominent than any other, 
with our annual history. Our state papers have 
scarcely, since the present government began, 
touched any other subject ; and our statute book 
will be found to record as well the ajr^ressions 
themselves as peaceful attempts at their removal, 
in various fruitless acts of legislative interposition. 
It may strike, even the best informed, with a 
momentary surprise when it is mentioned, that 
for eighteen successive years the official commu- 
nication from the head of the executive govern- 
ment to both Houses of Congress, at the open- 
ing of the annual sessions, has embraced a refe- 
rence to some well ascertained infringement of 
our rights as an independent state ! Where is the 
parallel of this in the history of any nation hold- 
ing any other than a rank of peimanent weak- 
ness or inferiority ? As subsequent and superior 
misfortunes expel the remembrance of those 
which have gone before, so distinct injuries as 
we have progressively received them, have con- 
tinued to engross for their day, our never tiring 
remonstrances. 

Still, it may be said, we have been prosperous 
and happy! So we have relatively. But we 
have, assuredly, been abridged of our full and 



9 

I'ightfui measure of prospeiity. Of a nation 
composed of millions calamitous indeed, beyond 
example, would be its lot if, in its early stages, the 
domestic condition of all, or the chief part of its in- 
liabitants was, in any sensible degree*, touched 
with misery or overwhelmed with ruin. This 
marks the fali of nations. It is not the way in 
which national misfortunes and an untoward na- 
tional fate begin to operate. We protest against 
the principle which inculcates constant submis- 
sion to wrongs. To ourselves, to our posterity, 
this is alike due. With what palliation Avould it 
be rephed to the plunder of a rich man, that 
enough was left for his comfortable or even easy 
subsistence? If our ships are taken, is it sufficient 
thatour housesare left? if ourmariners are seized;, 
is it a boon that our farmers, our mechanics, our 
laborers are spared ? that those who sit behind 
the barriers of affluence are safe? To what ulti- 
mate dangers would not so partial an estimate 
of the protecting duty open the way? Happily, 
we trust, the nation on a scale of more enlarged 
equity and wiser forecast, has judged and has 
willed differently. Having essayed its utmost 
to avert its wrongs by peaceful means, it has de- 
termined on appealing to the sword, not on the 
ground of immediate pressure alone, but on the 
still higher one that longer submission to them 
holds out a prospect of permanent evil, a pros- 
pect rendered certain by the experience we have 

2 



It) 

ourselves acquired, that forbearance for more 
than twenty years has not only invited a repeti- 
tion, but an augmentation of trespasses, increas- 
ing in bitterness as well as number, increasing 
in the most flagrant prostrations of justice, pre- 
sumptuously avowed at length to be devoid of 
all pretext of moral right, and promulgated as the 
foundation of a system intended to be as perma- 
nent as its elements are depraved. 

It IS cause of the deepest rcgi-et, fellow citi- 
zens, that while we are about to enter upon a 
conflict with one nation, our multiplied and hea- 
vy causes of complaint against another should 
remain unredressed. It adds to this regret, that, 
although a last attempt is still depending, the 
past injustice of the latter nation, wantoning 
also in rapacity, leaves but the feeblest hope 
of their satisfactory and peaceful adjustment. 

Some tliere are \\ ho shrink back, at the idea of 
war with Britain ! War with the nation from 
which we sprung, and where still sleep the ashes 
of our ancestors? whose historv is our history, 
whose fire sides are our fire sides, whose illustri- 
ous names are our boast, whose glory should be 
our glory ! Yes, we feel these truths ! We re- 
ject the poor definition of country which would 
limit it to an occupancy of the same little piece 
of earth ! A common stock of ancestry, a kin- 
dred face and blood, the links that grow upon a 
thousand moral and domestic sympathies-should 



11 

indeed reach farther, and might, once have been. 

made to defy the intermediate roll of an ocean 

to sunder them apart. 

But, who was it that first broke these ties? 

who was it that first forgot, that put to scorn 
such generous ties? Let their own hist rians, 
their own orators answer Hear the language 
of a member of the British House of Commons 
in the year 17t)5: ^'■They chUdi^n jilanted by 
your care! No! your oppression planted them in 
America. They fled from your tyranny into 
an uncultivated land, wliere they wcyq exposed 
to all the hardsliips to which human nature is 
liable — to the savage cruelty of the enemy of the 
wilderness, a people the most subtle and the 
most formidable upon the face of he earth ; — 
and yet they met all these hardships with plea- 
sure compared with those they suffered in their 
own country, where they should have been treat- 
ed as friends Tlmj nourished by your indul- 
gence? No, tkey grew by your neglect. When 
you began to care about them, that care was ex- 
ercised in sending persons to rule over them, 
who were the deputies of some deputy, sent to 
spy out their liberty, to misrepres. nt their ac- 
tions, to prey upon their substance; men whose 
behavior has caused the blood of those sons of 
liberty to recoil within them. They protected 
by your arms ? They have nobly taken up arms 
in your defence ; have exerted their valor, amidst 



12 



their constant and laborious industry, for the^ 
cicfence of a country the interior of which has 
yielded all its little savings to your enlargement, 
while its frontier was drenched in blood.'** 
Yes, who was it we ask first tore such generous 
sympathies? Let the blood of Concord and of 
Lexington again answer! Our whole country 
converted into a field of battle, the bayonet thrust 
at our bosoms ! and for what ? for asking only 
the privileges of Britons ; while they claimed " to 
bind us in all cases whatsoever." Against all 
that history teaches, will they raise upon us the 
crime of rending these ties. They compelled 
us into a rejection of them all — a rejection to 
which we were long loth — by their constant ex- 
ercise of unjust power ; by laying upon us the 
band of sharp, systematic, oppression ; by attack- 
ing us with fierce vengeance. With the respect 
due from faithful subjects, but with the dignity 
of freemen, did we, with long patience, petition, 
suppficate, for a removal of our prongs, while 
new oppressions, insults, and hostile troops were 
our answers ! 

When Britain shall pass from the stage of na- 
tions, it will be indeed, with her glory, but it will 
also be with hei' shame. And, with shame, will 
her annals in nothino; more be loaded than in this. 

* So actively did the American colonies cooperate with Great Bri- 
tain in the memorable seven years' war, to which this speech of Colo- 
nel Barre alludes, tliat thc> are said to have lost nearl} thirty thousawd 
of their young men. Ste Marsball 's Life of Washington, •col. 5, p. 85. 



13 

Thnt while in the actual possession of much 
relative freedom at home, it has been her unifo-^m 
characteristic to let full upon the remote subjects 
of her own empire, an iron hand of harsh and vin- 
dictive power If, as is aliedged in her eulogy, to 
touch her soil proclaims emancipation to the 
slave, it is more true, that when her sceptre 
reaches over that confined limit it thenceforth, 
and as it menacingly waves throughout the 
globe, inverts the rule that would give to her 
soil this purifying virtue. Witness Scotland, 
towards whom her treatment, until the union in 
the last century, was marked, during the longest 
periods, by perfidious injustice or by rude force, 
circumventing her liberties, or striving to cut 
them down with the sword. Witness Ireland, 
who for five centuries has bled, who to the pre- 
sent hour continues to bleed, under the yoke of 
her galling supremacy; whose miserable vic- 
tims seem at length to have laid down, subdued 
and despairing, under the multiplied inflictions 
of her cruelty and rigor. In vain do her own 
best statesmen and patriots remonstrate against 
this unjust career 1 in vain put forth the annual 
efforts of their benevolence, their zeal, their elo- 
quence ; in vain touch every spring that interest, 
that humanity, that the maxims of everlasting 
justice can move, to stay its force and mitigate 
the fate of Irishmen. Alas, for the persecuted 
adherents of the cross she leaves no hope ! Wit- 



14 



ness her subject millions in the east ! where, in 
the desciiptive language of the greatest of her 
surviving orators, " sacrilege, massacre and per- 
fidy pile up the sombre pyramids of her re- 



nown." 



Bat, all these instances arc of her fellow men of 
merely co equal, perhaps unknown, descent and 
blood; co-existing from all time with herself, 
and making up, only accidentally, a part of her 
dominion. IVe ought to have been spared. The 
otherwise undistinguishing rigor of this out- 
stretched sceptre might still have spared us. fie 
were descended from her own loins ; bone of her 
bone and flesh of /ler flesh ; not so much a part of 
her empire as a part of herself — her very self. 
Towards her own it might have been expected 
she would relent. When she invaded our 
homes, she saw her own countenance, heard 
her own voice, beheld her own altars ! VVliere 
was then that pure spirit which she now would 
tell us sustains her amidst self sacrifices in her 
generous contest for the liberties of other na- 
tions ! If it flowed in her nature, here it might 
have delighted to beam out ; here was space for 
its saving love; — thetiue mother chastens, not de- 
stroys the child : but Britain, when she struck at 
ns, struck at her own image, struck too at the im- 
mortal principles which her Lockes, her Miltons, 
and her Sydneys taught ! and the fell blow severed 
us forever as a kindred nation. The crime is 



15 

purely hei' own ; and upon her, not us, be its 
consequences and its stain. 

In looking at Britain with eyes less prepos- 
sessed than we are apt to have, from the cir- 
cumstance of our ancient connexion with her, 
we should see, indeed, her common lot of excel- 
lence, on which to found esteem, but it would 
lift the covering from deformities which may 
well startle and repel. A harshness of indivi- 
dual character, in the general view of it, which 
is perceived and acknowledged by all Europe; a 
spirit of unbecoming censure as regards all cus- 
toms and institutions not their own ; a feroci- 
ty in some of their characteristics of national 
manners, pervading their very pastimes, which 
no other modern people are endued with the 
blunted sensibility to bear ; an universally self- 
assumed superiority, not innocently manifesting 
itself in speculative sentiments among them- 
selves, but unamiably indulged when with 
foreigners of whatever description in their own 
country, or when they themselves arc the tem- 
porary sojourners in a foreign country ; a code 
of criminal law that forgets to feel for human 
frailty, that spoi-ts with human misfortune, that 
has shed more blood in deliberate judicial se- 
verity for two centuries past — constantly in- 
creasing too in its sanguinary hue — than has 
ever been sanctioned by the jurisprudence of 
any ancient or modern nation civilized and re- 



16 

fined like herself; the merciless whippings in 
her army, peculiar to herself alone; the conspi- 
cuous commission and freest acknowledgement 
of vice in her upper classes ; the overweening 
distinctions shown to opulence and birth, bO de- 
structive of a sound moral sentiment in the 
nation, so bafilins: to virtue ; — these are some of 
the traits that rise up to a contempLition of the 
inhabitants of this isle, and are adverted to, \\ ith 
an admission of qualities that may spring up as 
the correlatives of some of them, under the re- 
mark of our being prone to overlook the vicious 
ingredients while we so readily praise the good 
that belonojs to her. 

How should it fall out that this nation, more 
than any other that is ambitious and warlike, 
should be free from the dispositions that lead to 
injustice, violence, and plunder ? and what rules 
of prudence should check our watchfulness or 
allay our fears in regard to the plans her conduct 
is the best illustration of her having so steadily 
meditated towards us? Why not be girded a? 
regards her attacks, wary as regards her intrigues, 
alarmed as regards her habit of devastation and 
long itidulged appetite of blood ! Look at the^ 
marine of Britain, its vast, its tremendous extent ! 
What potentate upon the earth wields a power 
that is to be compared with it? what potentate 
upon the earth can move an apparatus of de- 
struction so without rival, so little liable to any 



li 

counteraction? The world in no age has seen 
its equal. It marks a new cr:i in the history of 
human force ; an instrument of power and of 
ambition, with no limits to its rapid and hideous 
workings but the waters and the winds. Why 
should she impiously suppose the ocean to be 
her own element ? why should she claim the 
right to give law to it — any more than the eagle 
the exclusive right to fly in the air? If ever 
there was a power formidable to the liberties of 
other states — particularly those afiir off — is it not 
this? If ever there was a power which other 
states should feel warned to behold with fearful 
jealousy, and anxious to see broken up, is it not 
this? The opinion inculcated by her own inte- 
rested politicians and journalists, that such a force 
is designed to be employed only to mediate for the 
rights of other nations, can hold no way before 
the unshackled reflections of a dispassionate 
mind. All experience, all knowledge of man, 
explode the supposition. So, more particularly, 
does the very growth and history of this extra- 
ordinary power itself It has swelled to its gigan- 
tic size, not through anyconcurrcnce of fortuitous 
or temporar}' causes, but through long continued 
and the most systematic national views. It was 
in the time of her early Edwards that she first 
began arrogantly to exact a ceremonious obei- 
sance from the flags of other nations, since which 

the entire spirit of her navigation laws, her com- 

B 



18 

mercial usages, her treaties, have steadily looked 
to the establishmejit of an over ruling marine. 
This is the theme from which her poets insult 
the world by singing, " Britannia's is the sea, 
and not a tlag but by permission waves." It is 
the great instrument of annoyance in the hands 
of her ministers with which they threaten, or 
which they wield, to confirm allies, to alarm 
foes, to make other states tributary to their 
manufacturing, their commerc?al or their warlike 
schemes; — even the multitude in their streets, 
theii- boys — the halt and the blind, learn it in 
the ballads, and at every carousal, " Rule Britan- 
nia" is the loud acclamation, the inspiring senti- 
ment, the triumphant echo of the scene! The 
end so long pursued with a constant view to 
unlimited empire throughout that element which 
covers two thirds of the globe has been obtained, 
and Britain tmds herself at this era the dreaded 

' mistress of the seas! With what rapacious 
sway she has begun to put forth this arm of her 
supremacy, we, fellow citizens, have experienced, 

• while the tlames of Copenhagen have lighted it 
up to Europe in characters of a more awful glare. 
When .the late Colonel Henry Laurens left 
England, in the year 1774, he had previously 
w^aitcd on the Earl of Hilsborough, in order 
to converse with him on American affairs. In 
the course of conversation Colonel Laurens said, 
the duty of three pence a pound on tea, and all 



19 

the other taxes, were not worth the expense of 
a war. " You mistake the cause of our contro- 
versy with your country,'' said his Lordship ; 
" You spread too much canvas upon the ocean : 
do you think ice will let you go on idth your na- 
vigation, and your forty thousand seumenT^* 
The same hostile spiiit to our growing com- 
merce has actuated every minister, and every 
privy council and every parliament of Great 
Britain since that time ; and it is the spirit she 
manifests towards other nations. The recent 
declarations made upon the floor of the House 
of Commons in debate upon the orders in 
council, add a new corroboration to the proofs 
that this monopolizing spirit has been one of the 
steady maxims designed to secure and uphold 
her absolute dominion upon the waves. But 
to that Beinsf who made the waters and the 
winds for the common use of his creatures do 
we owe it never to forego our equal claim to 
their immunities. 

In entering upon a war it is our chief conso- 
lation — that will give dignity to the contest and 
confidence to our hearts — to know that before 
God and before the world, our cause is just. 
To dilate on this head, altho' so fruitful, would 
swell to undue limits this address, and betrav a 
forgetfulness of the informed and anticipating 

• The writer derived this anecdote through one of our principal 
statesmen who has been abroad. 



20 

understandings of this assembly. Our provoca- 
tion consists of multiplied wrongs, of the most 
numerous injuries, of the most aggravated insults. 
They have been fully placed before the world in 
the recent authentic declarations of our gov-ern- 
ment. In these declarations will be read the 

solemn justification of what we have done, and 
our posterity will cling to them as a manly, yet 
pure and unblemished portion of their inheri- 
tance. In the language of one of them flowing 
from the highest and the purest source, founded 
on authentic history, and which exhibits a state 
paper alike distinguished by its profound rea- 
soning, its elevated justice, and its impressive 
dignity, we have 

*' beJield, infme, on the side of Great Britain 
*' a state of tj^ar against the United States; 
" and, on the side of the United States, a 
^' state of jJ^ace towards Great Britain.'''' — 

It is the same pen, too, which has been officially 
employed for so many years in combatting our 
wrongs and striving for their pacific redress, 
with a constant and sublime adherence to the 
maxims of universal equity as well as of public 
law, which now solemnly declares our actual 
situation. Can Americans then hesitate what 
part to act? whither would have fled the 
remembrance of their character and deeds? 
wlither soon would flee their rights, their liber- 



21 

ties? where would be the spirits, where the 
courage, of their slain lathers? Snatched and 
gone from ignoble sons ! What should we an- 
swer to the children we leave behind, who will 
take their praise or their reproach, from the 
conduct of their sires — and those sires republi- 
cans! who, rejecting from the train of their 
succession the perishing honors of a ribbon or 
a badge, are more nobly inspired to transmit the 
unfading distinctions that spring from the reso- 
lute discharge of all the patriot's high duties! 
Why should we stay our arm against Britain 
while she wars upon us ? are wc appalled at 
her legions ? do we shrink back at her ven- 
geance? No, fellow citizens, no! we have 
faced those legions, braved and triumphed over 
that vengeance. Powerful as she is, old in arms 
and in discipline, upon the plains of America 
has she once learned that her ranks can be sub- 
dued and her high ensign fall. Not in a boast- 
ful, but in a temper to encourage, would we 
speak it, British valor has yielded to the equal, 
spontaneous valor, but the more indignant fire 
which freedom and a just cause could impart, 
when opposed to the hired forces of an unjust 
king. And is there less to inspire now ? Let a 
few short reflections determine. 

While I abstain from any enumeration of the 
other encroachments of Great Britain upon us 
as an independent nation, througli their succes- 



22 

slve accumulations until they have ended in ma- 
king the whole trade of our country in substance 
and in terms colonial, suffering it to exist, and to 
exist only, where it subserves her own absorbing 
avarice, or what she calls her retaliating ven- 
geance, I must nevertheless solicit your indul- 
gence to pause with me, for a little while, upon 
a single wrong. 

The seizure of the persons of American citi- 
zens under the name and the pretexts of im- 
pressment, by the naval officers of Great Bri- 
tain, is an outrage of that kind which makes it 
difficult to speak of it in terms of appropriate 
description ; for this, among other reasons, that 
the offence itself is new. It is probable that the 
most careful researches into history, where in« 
deed of almost every form of rapine between 
men and between nations is to be found the me- 
lancholy record, will yet afford no example of 
the systematic perpetration of an offence of a 
similar nature, perpetrated, too, under a claim of 
ricrht. To take a just and no other than a se- 
rious illustration, the only parallel to it is to be 
found in the African slave trade ; and if an em- 
inent statesman of England once spoke of the 
latter, as tlic greatest practical evil that had ever 
afflicted mankind, we may be allowed to deno- 
minate the former the greatest practical offence 
that has ever been offered to a civilized and in- 
dependent state. With the American govern- 



23 

ment it lias been a question of no party or of 
no day. At every period of its administration, 
the odious practice has been constantly protested 
against, and its discontinuance been demand- 
ed under every form of pacific remonstrance. 
With all our statesmen, while cnaaaed in exer- 
cising the public authorities of the nation, it has 
been deemed, if not otherwise to have been ab- 
rogated, legitimate cause of war. The only 
imaginable difference among any of them, has 
been, as to the time when it would be proper to 
use this imperious resort — as if the time was not 
always at hand for a nation to redeem such a 
stain upon its vitals, and as if an encroachment 
of this nature does not become the more diffi- 
cult to beat back with each year, and with each 
instance, in which it is permitted. But it best 
accorded with the genius of our government, 
with its love of peace, and perhaps with what 
was due to peace, to attempt at first its pacific 
removal. General Washington, when at the 
head of the government, is known to have 
viewed it with the sensibility that such an in- 
dignity could not fail to arouse in his bosom, 
and had he lived until this day to see it not 
only unredressed and unmitigated, but in- 
creased, amidst all the amicable efforts on 
our part for its cessation, there is the strongest 
reason for supposing that his just estimate of 
the nation's welfare, that his lofty and gallant 



24 

spirit, would have stood forth, had it been but 
the single grievance, the manly advocate for its 
extirpation by the sword. But if our submis- 
sion to it so long has incurred a just reproach, 
happily it is in some measure assuaged in the 
reflection that our forbearance will serve to put 
us more completely in the right at this eventful 
period. 

That our enemy has invariably refused to ac- 
cede to such terms as were answerable to the in- 
dispensable expectations of our own government, 
as the organ of a sovereign people, upon this 
head, is a point susceptible of entire proof. 
Avoiding other particulars, it will be sufficient 
to introduce a single one. It is a fact, which 
the archives of our public departments will 
show, that in order to take from Great Bri- 
tain the remnant of her own excuses for 
seizing our men under the pretext, at all times 
disallowable, of invading the sanctuary of our 
ships in search of her own, it was proposed to 
her, that the United States would forbear to re- 
ceive her seamen on board of their vessels, pro- 
vided she, in her turn, would abstain fiom re- 
ceiving our men on board of hers. This would 
wholly have destroyed the ir.sulting claim set 
up by her to break in with armed men upon 
our vessels while peaceably sailing on the ocean 
under color of forcibly taking her own mariners, 
for, the regulation, if adopted, would have given 



25 

the previous assurance that her own were not 
there to be found. But this proposal, it is also 
a ftict, she declined. As rapacious of men, as 
greedy of riches and grasping at dominion, she 
nccflccted to avail herself of a reo-ulation that 
would curtail her in this new species of plunder 
— this plunder in the flesh and blood of freemen, 
of which she has afforded the first example, in 
all time, to the eyes of an insulted world. But 
it forcibly marks the devouring ambition of her 
naval spirit ; and that if public law is ridiculed, 
justice scoffed at, sovereignty prostrated, and 
humanity made to shudder and to groan — still, 
her ships must have men. 

Under a mere personal view of this outrage, 
and considering it on the footing of a moral sin, 
it is strictly like the African slave trade. Like 
that it breaks up families and causes hearts to 
bleed. Like that it tears the son from the father, 
the father from the son. Like that it makes or- 
phans and widows, takes the brother from the 
sister, seizes up the young man in the health of 
his days and blasts his hopes forever. It is 
worse than the slavery of the African, for the 
African is only made to work under the lash of 
a task master, whereas the citizen of the United 
States, thus enslaved, receives also the lash on 
the slightest lapses from a rigorous discipline, 
and is moreover exposed to the bitter fate of 

fighting against those towards whom he has no 

4 



26 - ' 

hostility, perhaps his own countrymen — it may 
be, his own immediate kindred. This is not 
exaggeration, fellow citizens, it is reality and 
fact. 

But, say the British, \vc want not your men; 
we want only our own Prove that they are 
yow's and we will surrender them up. Baser 
outrage! insolent indignity! that a free born 
American must be made to prove his nativity to 
those who have previousH' violated his liberty, 
else he is to be held forever as a slave! That be- 
fore a British tribunal — a British boarding officer 
—a free-born American must be made to seal up 
the vouchers of his lineage, to exhibit the re- 
cords of his baptism and his birth, to establish 
the identity that binds him to his parents, to his 
blood, to his native land, by setting forth in 
odious detail his size, his age, the shape of his 
frame, whether his hair is long or cropt — his 
marks — like an ox or a horse of the manner — 
that all this must be done as the condition of 
his escape from the galling thraldom of a British 
ship! Can we hear it, can we think of it, with 
any other than indignant feelings at our tar- 
nished name and nation ? And suppose through 
this degrading process his deliverance to be ef- 
fected, where is he to seek redress for the inter- 
mediate wronfij? I'he unauthorised seizure and 
detention of any piece of property, a mere tres- 
pass upon goods, will always lay the foundation^ 



27 

for some, often the heaviest retribution, in every 
well-regulated society. But to ^vhoIIl, or where, 
shall our imprisoned citizen, when the privilege 
of shaking off liis fetters has at last been accord- 
ed to him, turn for his redress? where look to 
reimbu^e the stripes, perhaps the wounds he 
has received — his worn spirit — his long inward 
agonies ? No, the public code of nations recog- 
nizes not the penalty, for to the modern rapa- 
ciousness of Britain it was reserved to add to 
the dark catalogue of iiuman sufferings, this 
flagitious crime. 

But why be told that, even on such proofs, 
our citizens will be released from their captivity? 
We have long and sorely experienced the im- 
practicable nature of this boon which, in the 
imagined relaxation of her deep injustice, she 
would affect to hold out. Go to the office of the 
Department of State, within sight of where we 
are assembled, and there see the piles of certifi- 
cates and documents, of afTidavils, records and 
seals, anxiously drawn out and folded up — to 
shov/ why Americans should not be held as 
slaves — and see how they rest, and will f»>!cver 
rest, in hopeless neglect upon the shelves. Some 
defect in iorm, some impossibility of iilling up 
all the crevices which British exaction insists 
upon being closed ; the uncertainty, if, after all, 
they will ever reach their point of destination, 
the climate or the sea where the hopes of gain 



28 



Qi' the lust of conquest are impelling, through 
constant changes, their ships; the probability 
that the miserable individual to whom they are 
intended as the harbinger of liberation from his 
shackles may have been translated from the first 
scene of his incarceration to another, fiiom a 74 
to a 64, from a 64 to a frigate, and thus through 
rapid, if not designed, mutations, a practice 
which is known to exist — these are obvious 
causes of discouragement, by making the issue 
at all times doubtful, most frequently hopeless. 
And this Great Britain cannot but know. She 
does know it, and, with deliberate mocker}', in 
the composure with which bloated power can 
scoff at submissive and humble suffering, has 
she continued to increase and protract our hu- 
miliation as well as our suffering, by renewals of 
the visionary offer. 

Again it is said, that our citizens resemble 
thtir men, look like them in their persons, speak 
the same language, that discrmiinations are dif- 
ficult or impracticable, and therefore it is they 
are unavoidably seized. Most insulting excuse ! 
And will they impeach that God who equally 
made us both ? who forms our features, moulds 
our statures and stamps us with a countenance 
that turns up to his goodness m adoration and 
love! Impious as well as insulting! The leo- 
pard cannot change his spots or the Ethiopian 
his skin, but 'we, wCy are to put off our bodies 



29 

and become unlike ourselves as the price of our 
safety ! Why should similarity of face yoke us 
exclusively with an ignominious burden? uhy, 
because we were once descended from them, 
should we be made at this day, and forever, to 
clank chains? Suppose one of their subjects 
landed upon our shores — let us suppose him a 
prince of their blood — shall we seize upon him 
to mend our highways, shall we draft him for 
our ranks? shall we subject him in an instant 
to all the civil burthei5S of duty, of taxation, of 
every species of aid and service that grow out 
of the allegiance of the citizen, until he can send 
across the ocean for the registers of his family 
and birth? What has her foul spirit of impress- 
ment to answer to this ? Why not equally de- 
mand on our part that every one of her factors 
who lands upon our soil should hv'n\g a protection 
in his pocket, or hang one round his neck, as 
the price of his safety? If this plea of mon- 
strous outrage be, only for one instant, admitted, 
remember, fellow citizens, that it becomes as 
lasting as monstrous II our children, and our 
children's children, and their children, continue 
to speak the same tongue, to hold (he same port 
with their fathers, they also will be liable to this 
enslavement, and the groaning evil be co existent 
with British power, British rapacity, and the 
maxim thai the British navy must have men.' 
If our men are like theirs, it should form, to anv 



30 



other than a nation callous to justice, dead to 
the moral sense, and deliberately bent upon 
plunder, the very reason why they should give 
up the practice, seeing that it is intrinsically lia- 
ble to these mistakes, and that the exercise of 
what they call a right on their part necessarily 
brings with it certain, eternal, and the most high- 
handed wrongs to us. 

1 am a Roman citizen, I am a Roman citizen! 
was an exclamation that insured safety, com- 
manded respect, or inspired terror, in all parts 
of the world. And although the mild temper 
of our government exacts not all these attributes, 
we may, at least, be suffered to deplore with 
hearts of agony and shame, tliat while the inha- 
bitants of every other part of the globe enjoy an 
immunity from the seizure of their persons, ex- 
cept under the fate of war, or by acknowlegcd pi- 
rates — even the wretched Africans of late — to be 
an American citizen litis, for five and twenty 
years, been the signal for insult and the passport 
to captivity. Let it not be rephed that the men 
they take from us are sometimes not of a charac- 
ter or description to attract the concern or inter 
position of tlie government. If they were all so, 
it lessens in no wise the enormity of the outrage. 
It adds indeed a fresh indignity to mention it. 
The sublime equality of justice recognizes no 
such distinctions, and a government founded up- 
on the great basis of equal right, ^vould foi'get one 



31 

of its fundamental duties, if in the exercise of its 
protecting power it admits to a foreign nation tlie 
least distinction b( tu'een what it owes to the low- 
est and meanest, and the highest and most exalt- 
ed ':»f its citizens. 

Sometimes it is said that but few of our sea- 
men are in reality seized ! Progressive and foul 
a^crravation ! to admit the crime to our faces and 
seek to screen its atrocity under its limited ex- 
tent. Whence but from a source hardened with 
long rapine, could such a palliation flow? It 
is false. The files of that same department, its 
melancholy memorials, attest that there are 
thousands of our countrymen at this moment 
in slavery in their ships. And if there were but 
one hundred, if there were but fifty, if there were 
but ten — if there were but one, how dare they 
insult a soverei2;n nation with such an answer? 
Shall I state to you a fact, fellow citizens, that 
will be sufficient to rouse not simply your in- 
dignation, but your horror, and would that I 
could speak it at this moment to the whole na- 
tion, that twevy American who has a heart to 
be inflamed with honest resentment might 
hear; — a fact that shows all the excess of 
shame that should flush our faces at submission 
to an outrage so foul. I state to you, upon 
the highest and most unquestionable authority, 
that two of the nephews of your immortal 
Washington have been seized, drag^eid, made 



32 



slaves of on board of a British ship! Will 
it be credited ? It is nevertheless true They 
were kept in slavery more than a year, and as 
the transactions of your government will show, 
were restorrd to their libetty only a few months 
since * How. Americans, can you sit down 
under such indignities? To which of their 
princes, which of their nobles, to which of their 
ministers or which of their regents, will you 
allow, in the just pride of men and of freemen, 
that those who stand in consanguinity to the il- 
lustrious founder of your liberties, are second in 
all their claims to safety and protection ? But 
we must leave the odious subject. It swells in* 
deed with ever fruitful expansion, to the indig- 
nant view, but while it animates it is loathsome. 
If the English saj' it is merely an abuse incident 
to a right on their part, besides denying forever 
the foundation of such right where it goes to the 
presumptuous entry of our own vessels with their 
armed men, shall we tolerate its exercise for an 
instant when manifestly attended with such a 
practical, unceasing, and enormous oppression 
upon ourselves? 

This crime of impressment may justly be con- 
sidered — posterity will so consider it — as tran- 
scending the amount of all the other wrongs we 



• They were the sons of tlie late Fieldfng Lewis, of Virginia, wh© 

was immediate nephew to Gcnerul Washnijvton, for all which sec the 
papers on file in the office of the Secretary of State. 



33 

have received. Notwithstanding the millions 
which the cupidity of Britain has wrested from 
us, the millions which the cupidity of France has 
wrested from us, including her wicked burnings 
of our ships — adding also the wrongs from Spain 
and Denmark — the sum of all should be estima- 
ted below this enormity. Ships and merchan- 
dise belong to individuals, and may be valued ; 
may be endured as subjects of negotiation. But 
men are the property of the nation. In every 
American face a part of our country's sovereign- 
ty is written. It is the living emblem — a thou- 
sand times more sacred than the nation's flao- it- 
self — of its character, its independence and its 
rights — its quick and most dearly cherished in- 
signium — towards which the nation should ever 
demand the most scrupulous and inviolable im- 
munity, being instantly sensitive under the fla- 
grant indignity of the slightest infringement of its 
beaming, vivid, attributes of sovereignty ! Man 
was created in his Maker's own image — " in the 
image of God created he him." When he is 
made a slave, where shall there be reimburse- 
ment ? No, fellow citizens, under the assistance 
and protection of the Most High, the evil must 
be stopped. His own image must not be en- 
slaved. It was deservedly the first enumerated 
of our grievances in the late solemn me-sage 
from the first magistrate of our land; on the 

eighteenth of June of this memorable year wo 

5 



appealed t** f"be sword and to Heaven a'^ainst it, 
and we sha!! be wanting t ) our e've . to ou pos- 
terity — we shall never stand erect in our sove- 
reignty as a nation if we return it to the scabbard 
until such an infamy ard a curse are finally and 
effectually removed The blessings of peace it- 
self become a curse, a foul curse, while such a 
stain is permitted to rest upon our annals. Never, 
henceforth, must American ships be converted 
into worse than butchei's' shambles for the in- 
spection and seizure of human flesh ! We would 
appeal to the justice and humanity of their own 
statesmen, claim the interference of their Wilbcr- 
forces — invoke the spirit of their departed Fox — 
call upon all among them who nobly succeeded 
in their long struggles against the African slave 
trade, to stand up and retrieve the British name 
from the equal odium qf this oifence. 

If it be true that injuries long acquiesced in lose 
the power of exciting sensibility, it may be re- 
marked, in conclusion of this hateful subject how 
forcibly verified it is in the instance of robbing 
us of our citizens When it happens that some 
of them are surrendered up, on examination 
and allo-uaance of the proofs, it is not unusual 
to advert to it as an indication of the justice 
and generosity of the British! Tlie very act, 
which, to an abstract judgment, should be 
taken as stamping a seal upon the outrage, by 
the acknowledgment it implies from themselves 



35 

of the atrocity because the unlawfulness of 
the seizure, is thus converted into a medium oi 
homage and of praise! Inverted patriotism! 
drooping, downcast, honor! to derive apleasura* 
ble sensation from the insulting confession of a 
crime! 

Next to a just war, fellow citizens, we wage 
a defensive one. Tliis is its true and only cha- 
racter. Our fields were not, indeed, invaded, 
or our towns entered and sacked But still it 
is purely a war of defence It was to stop reite- 
rated encroachment wc took up arms Persons^ 
property, rights, character, sovereignty, justice, 
all these were contumaciously invaded at our 
hands. Let impartial truth say, if it were for 
ambition, or conquest, or plunder, or through 
any false estimate of character, or pride we ap- 
pealed to the sword No, Americans ! No I 
Republicans, there will rest no such blot upon 
your moderate, your pacific councils. It is an 
imperfect view of tills question which takes as a 
defensive war, only that which is entered upon 
when the assailant is bursting through your 
doors and levelling the musket at the bosoms of 
your women and children. Think liow a na- 
tion may be abridged, may be dismantled of its 
rights, may be cut down in its liberties, this side 
of an open attack. The Athenian law punished 
seduction of female honor more severely than 
it did force. And the nation that Avould adopt 



86 

it as a maxim to lie by under whatever curtail- 
ments of its sovereignty, resolving upon no resis* 
tance until the actual investment of its soil, 
might find itself too fatally trenched upon, too 
exhausted in resources, or too enfeebled in spirit, 
to rouse itself when the foe was rushing through 
the gates. 

The war whoop of the Indian had indeed been 
heard in the habitations of our frontier; and it 
is impossible to abstain from imputing to the 
agency of our enemy this horid species of in- 
vasion. Their hand must be in it. For although 
it may not be directly instigated by their go- 
vernment on the other side of the v/ater, vet 
past proofs make it to the last degree probable 
that the intri2:ues of their sub«ao;ents in the Cana- 
das are instrumental to the ^^ ickedness Nor 
will a rational mind hesitate to infer that the 
same spirit which, from that quarter at least, 
could send, for the most nefarious purposes, a 
polished spy through our cities, would also, va- 
rying the form of its inequity, let loose upon us 
the hatchet and the scalping knife. Great Bri- 
tain indeed had not declared war aginst us in 
form, but she had made it upon us in fact. She 
had plundered us of our property, she had im- 
prisQ;icd our citizens; nor can any accommoda* 
tion now erase from our memories, although it 
may from our public discussions, the bloody 
memorials of her attack upon the Chesapeake, 



37 

Since, fellow citizens, that through all these 
motives a war with Britain has been cast upon 
us, while bearing up against whatever of pressure 
it may bring with the energy and the hope of our 
fathei-s, let us deduce also this of consolation : 
that it will, more than any thing else, have a 
tendency to break the sway which that nation 
is enabled to hold over us. I would address 
myself on this point to the candid minds of our 
countrymen, and to all such among them as 
have bosoms penetrated with a genuine love for 
our republican systems. We form, probably 
for the first time in all history,, the instance of a 
nation descended, and politically detached from 
another, but still keeping up the most intimate 
connexions with the original and once parent 
stock. The similarity of our manners and cus- 
toms ; our language being one, and our religion 
nearly one ; the entire identity in individual ap- 
pearance, and in all things else, which is spread 
before the American and the English eye ; our 
boundless social intercommunication ; the very 
personal respectability, in so many instances, of 
those of that nation who, in such numbers, come 
to this; pecuniary connexions so universal and 
unlimited ; dependent upon her loom, dependent 
upon her fashions, dependent upon her judica- 
ture, dependent upon her drama — reading none 
but her books, or scarcely any others ; taking 
up her character and actions chiefly at the hands 



of her own annalists or panegyrists ; nothing in 
line that comes from that quarter being n gard- 
ed as foreign, but as well her inhabitants as her 
modes of life and all her usages, being taken to 
be as of our own — these complicated similitudety 
operate like cramps and holdings to bind us in- 
sensibly to her sides, yielding to her an easy, an 
increasing, and an unsuspected ascendency. 

It may be said this is an advantageous as- 
cendency; that, as a young people, we may 
profit of the intimacy, have her arts and her 
manners, copy her many meliorations of exis- 
tence, cat of her intellectual food and get stami- 
na the more quickly upon its nourishment. 
But stop Americans ! do you not know that 
this same people are the subjects of an old and 
luxurious monarchy, with all the corrupt attach- 
ments to which it Kads ; that if not iluir duty, 
it is naturally their practice to breathe the praise 
and inculcate the love of their own forms of 
pality. Do you not know, that if not the cor- 
relativ^e duty, it is, as certainly, their corielative 
practice, to deal out disapprobation, even con- 
tempt for our own, and the habits which alone 
they should superinduce? And is there not 
cause for apprehension that the superiority which 
we so easily, often so slavishly, choose to yield 
her on all other points — that the moi-al prostra- 
tion in which we consent to fall before her foot- 
'gtool — may also trench upon the reverence due 



do 

to oui' own public institutions, producing results 
at which all our fears should startle ? If, fellow 
citizens, oui' freedom, our republican freedom, 
which, to make lasting, we should cherish with 
uninterrupted constancy and the purest love, has 
a foe more deadly than any other, it is probably 
this; this is the destroying spirit which can 
make its v/ay slowly and unperceivcd, but surely 
and fatally. If we stood farther off— much 
farther oiY — from Britain, we should still be near 
enouoh to derive all that she has valuable, while 
we should be more safe from the poison of her 
political touch. Just as, at this day, we can 
draw upon tlie repositories of genius and litera- 
ture among the ancients, while we escape the 
vices of paganism and (he errors of their mis- 
leading philosophy. But if Athenian citizens 
filled our towns ; if we spoke their language, 
wore their dress, took them to our homes ; if wc 
kept looking up to them with general imitation 
and subserviency, the truths of Chiistianity 
themselves would be in danger of yielding to 
the adoration of the false gods ! 

This war may produce, auspiciously and for- 
ever, the effect of throwing us at a safer distance 
from so contaminating an intimacy, making our 
liberty thrive more securely, and ourselves more 
independent — privately and politicall}-. From 
no other nation are we in danger in the same 



40 

way; for, with no other nation, have we the 
same affinities, but, on the contrary, numerous 
points of repulsion that interpose as our guard. 
Let us have a shy connexion with them all, for 
history gives the admonition, that for the last 
twenty years, ev^ery nation of the world that has 
come too close in friendship with either our pre- 
sent enemy, or her neighbor, the ferocious giant 
of the land, has lost its liberties, been prostrated, 
or been ravaoed. After the war of our revolu- 
tion, we were still so much in the feebleness of 
youth as to take the outstretched hand of Britain, 
who could establish our industr}', shape our oc- 
cupations, and give them, involuntarily to our- 
selves, the direction advantageous to her views. 
But, henceforth, we shall stand upon a pedestal 
whose base is fixed among ourselves, whence we 
may proudly look around and afar — from the 
ocean to the mountains, from the mountains to 
the farthest west, beholding our fruitful helds, 
listening to the hammer of our work shops, the 
cheerful noise of our looms: — where the view, 
on all sides, of native numbers, opulence and 
skill, will enable us to stamp more at pleasure 
the future destinies of our happy land. Possibly, 
also, the sameness of our puisuits in so many 
things, with Britain, instead of pointing to close 
connexions with her, as her politicians so stea- 
dily hold up, will at length indicate to the fore- 



41 

siaht of our own statesmen unalterable reasons 
to an intercourse more restrained — it may be the 
elements of a lasting rivalship. 

Animated by all the motives which demand 
and justify this contest, let us advance to it with 
resolute and high beating hearts, supported by 
the devotion to our beloved country, which 
wishes for her triumphs cannot fail to kindle. 
Dear to us is this beloved country, far dearer 
than we can express, for all the true blessings 
that flourish within her bosom ; the country of 
our fathers, the country of our children, the 
scene of our dearest affections — whose rights and 
liberties have been * consecrated by the blood 
whose current runs so fresh in our own veins. 
Who shall touch such a country, and not fire 
the patriotism and unsheath the swords of us 
all ? No, Americans ! while you reserve your 
independent privilege of rendering, at all times, 
your suftVages as you please, let our proud foe 
be undeceived. Let her, let the world Jearn, 
now and forever, that the voice of our nation, 
when once legitimately expressed, is holy — is 
imperious ! that it is a summons of duty to 
every citizen ; that when we stiike at a foreign 
foe, the sacred bond of country becomes the 
pledge of a concentrated efibrt ; that in such a 
cause, and at sucli a crisis, we feel with but one 
heart and strike with our whole strengtli ! We 
are the only nation in the world, fellow citizens, 



where the people and the government stand, ivj 
all things, indcntified ; where all the acts of the 
latter are immediately submitted to the superior 
revision of the former ; where every blow at the 
general safety becomes the personal concern of 
each individual. Happy people, happy govern- 
ment! will you give up, will you not defend, 
such blessings ? We are also perhaps the only 
geauine republic which, since the days of the 
ancients, has taken up arms against a foreign 
foe in defence of its rights and its liberties. 
Animating thought ! warmed w^ith the fire of 
ancient freedom, may we not expect to see the 
valor of ThermopylcC and Marathon again dis- 
played ! The Congress of eighteen hundred 
and twelve, here, within these august walls, 
have proclaimed to the world that other feelings 
than those of servility, avarice, or fear, pervade 
the Ameiican bosom ; tliat in the hope and 
purity of youth, we are not debased by the pas- 
sions of a corrupt old age ; that our sensibilities 
are other than sordid ; that we are ambitious of 
the dignified port of freemen ; that while pacific 
we know the value of national rights and na- 
tional justice, and with the spirit due to our 
lasting prosperity as a republic, design to repel 
authenticated outrages upon either. That we 
will and dare act as becomes a free, an en- 
lightened, and a brave people. Illustrious Con- 
gress! worthy to have your names recounted 



43 

with the illustrious fathers of our revolution * 
for what orpievanccs were those that led to the 
great act which made us a nation, that have not 
been equalled, shall I say have nut been sur- 
passed, by those which moved to your deed? 
and what noble hazards did they encounter 
which yoR ought not to brave ! 

If we ire not fully prepared for war, let the 
Bublime sDectacle be soon exhibited, that a free 
and a valant nation, with onr numbers, and a 
just cause, is always a powerful imtion ; is al- 
ways ready to defend its essential rights! The* 
Congress of '76 declared ladependence and 
hurled defiance at this same insatiate foe, six 
and thirty years ago, with an army of seventeen 
thousand hostile troops just landed upon our 
chores ; and shall we now hesitate ? shall we 
bow our necks in submission, shall we make an 
ianominious surrender of our birthrio^ht under 
the plea that we are not prepared to defend it ? 
No, Americans ! Yours has been a pacific re- 
public, and therefore has not exhibited military 
preparation ; but it is a free republic, and there- 
fore will it now, as before, soon command batta- 
lions, discipline, courage! Could a general of old 
by only stamping on the earth raise up armieS; 
ano shall a w hole nation of freemen, at such a 
time, know not where to look for them? The 
soldiers of Bunker's hill, the soldiers of Bonning- 



44 

ton, the soldiers of the Wabash, the seamen of 
Tripoli contradict it! 

By one of the surviving patriots of our revo- 
lution I have been told, that in the Congress of 
1774, among other arguments used lo prevent 
a war, and separation from Great Britain, the 
danger of having our towns battered cown and 
burnt was zealously urged. The venerable 
Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolna, rose 
and replied to it in these memorable words: 
" Our sea port towns, Mr. President, are com- 
" posed of brick and wood. If they are de- 
" stroyed, we have clay and timber enough in 
" our country to rebuild them. But, if the 
" liberties of our country are destroyed, where 
" shall we find the materials to replace them?" 
Behold in this an example of virtuous sentiment 
fit to be imitated 

Indulo'e me with another illustration of Ame- 
rican patriotism, derived from the same source. 
Daring the siege of Boston, General Washington 
consulted Congress upon the propriety of bom- 
barding the town. Mr. Hancock was then 
President of Congress, After 'General Wash- 
ington's letter was read, a solemn silence ensued. 
Tills was broken by a member making a no- 
tion that the House should resolve itself into a 
committee of the whole, in order that Mr. Han- 
cock might give his opinion upon the important 
subject, as he was so deeply interested from 



45 

having all his estate in Boston. After he left 
the chair, he addressed the chairman of the 
committee of the whole in the following words: 
" It is true, sir, nearly all the property I 
" have in the world is in houses and other real 
" estate in the town of Boston ; but if the ex- 
" pulsion of the British army from it, and 
*' the liberties of our country require their being 
'' burnt to ashes — issue the order for that pinyose 
" immediately P 

What has ancient or modern story to boast 
beyond such elevated specimens of public virtue? 
and what inspiring lessons of duty do they teach 
to us? War, fellow citizens, is not the greatest 
of evils. Long submission to injustice is worse. 
Peace, a long peace, a peace purchased by mean 
and inglorious sacrifices, is worse, is far worse. 
War takes away a life destined by nature to 
death. It produces chiefly bodilj^ evils. But 
when ignoble peace robs us of virtue, debases 
the mind and chills its best feelinos, it renders 
life a living death, and makes us offensive above 
ground. The evils of ignoble peace are, an in- 
ordinate love of money — rage of p^.rty spirit — 
and a willingness to endure even slavery itself 
rather than bear pecuniary deprivations or brave 
manly hazards. The states of Holland and of 
Italy will be found, at several stages of their 
history, strikingly to exemplify this remark. 



46 

War in a just cause produces patriotism: 
witness tlie speech of Gadsden ! It produces 
the most noble disinterestedness where our 
country is concerned: witness the speech of 
Hancock! It serves to destroy party spirit, 
^vhich may become worse than war. In war 
death is produced without personal hatred ; but 
under the influence of party spirit inilamed by 
the sordid desires of an inglorious peace, the 
most malignant passions are generated and we 
hate with the spirit of murderers. 

Gould the departed heroes of the revolution 
rise from their sleep and behold their descen- 
dants hanging contentedly over hoards of money, 
or casting up British invoices, while so long a 
list of wronirs still looked them in the face, call- 
ing for retribution, what would they say? would 
they not hasten back to their tombs, now more 
welcome than ever, since th.ey would conceal 
from their view the base conduct of those sons 
for whom they so gallantly fought, and so gaU 
lantly fell ? But stop, return, return, illustrious 
band! stay and behold, sta}- and applaud what 
we too are doing! we will not dishonor your 
noble achievements ! we will defend the inheri- 
tance you bequeathed us, — we will wipe away 
all past stains, we will maintain our rights at 
the sword, or, like you, we will die ! Then 
shall we render our ashes worthy to mingle 
with yours ! 



47 

Sacred in our celebrations be this day to the 
end of time ! licvered be the memories of the 
statesmen and orators whose wisdom led to the 
act of Independence, and of the gallant soldiers 
who sealed it witli their blood ! May the fires of 
their sfenius and couraoe animate and sustain us 
in our contest, and bring it to a like glorious 
result ! may it be carried on with singleness to 
the objects that alone summoned us to it — as a 
great and imperious duty, irksome yet necessary! 
May there be a willing, a joyful, immolation of 
all selfish passions on the altar of a common 
country! may the hearts of our combatants be 
bold, and, under a propitious heaven, their 
swords flash victory ! may a speedy peace bless 
us and the passions of war go off, leaving in 
their place a stronger love of country and of 
each other ! Then may pacific glories, accu- 
mulating and beaming from the excitement of 
the national mind, long be ours : — a roused in- 
tellect, a spirit of patriotic improvement in 
whatever can gild the American name; — in 
arts, in literature, in science, in manufactures, in 
agriculture, in legislation, in morals, in imbuing 
our admirable forms of polity with still more 
and more perfection — may these then and long 
be ours ! may common pci ils and common 
triumphs bind us more closely together! may 
the era furnish names to our annals " on 
whom late time a kindling eye shall turn !" 



48 

Revered be the dust of those who fall, sweet 
their memories ! — their country vindicated, their 
duty done, an honorable renown, the regrets of 
a nation, the eulogies of friendship, the slow 
and moving dirges of the camp, the tears of 
beautj- — all, all, will sanctify their doom! Ho- 
nored be those who outlive the strife of arms ! — 
our rights established, justice secured, a haughty 
foe taught to respect the freemen she had abused 
and plundered — to survive to such recollections 
and such a consciousness, is there, can there be, 
a nobler reward ! 



Washington City, July, 1812. 



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